


Where We Stood

by hydianway



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Based on a Taylor Swift Song, F/F, baby we're the new romantics/come on come along with me, is apparently a tag anyway so there you go, spinning like a girl in a brand new dress/we had this big wide city all to ourselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-08 11:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4302594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/pseuds/hydianway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>America and Kate fell in love in New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where We Stood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kermits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kermits/gifts).



> one of the prompts was ‘something inspired by the taylor swift song of your choice’ so this fic was initially inspired by holy ground, and it’s also ended up with shades of this love, and new romantics in the middle, which i hope is alright.
> 
> also, general notice of disregard for anything that may or may not have happened in comics canon since about the end of young avengers v2, and another general notice for the fact that i'm not american and that if anything seems off language-wise i would appreciate the correction.

America and Kate fell in love in New York— or, to be particular about it, they fell in love in several New Yorks, the same cultural theme repeated seemingly endlessly across the multiverse, with only slight variations in the design of certain landmarks, local slang, and the quality of the average diner. They’d spent days all but lost in the subways below a strangely green-tinted and stretched out iteration of Queens, wondered at the wisdom of putting the Statue of Liberty right in the middle of Central Park in another universe, and were hopelessly confused by the New York where city planners had actually  _listened_ to an early twentieth-century architect’s ideas (considered, not without reason, to be more or less a joke in every other version of the multiverse) concerning the proper form of Manhattan Island. The park had been bulldozed altogether, replaced by a monumental kind of ancient Roman axis-road right down the centre, altogether too grand for America's tastes, and Kate's too, and they hadn't stayed very long in that universe. 

But they fell in love in New York, and New York is where they had been happiest. This is what America thinks about as she sits on a train in Panama in Earth-623, listening to the couple in front of her arguing about sleeping arrangements in the hotel they’re bound for and trying to ignore the squalling of a baby a few seats behind.

Kate is half a year ago now, the Young Avengers further distant, a lifetime away, or it feels like it ought to be with how slow time has been travelling for her. Still, she remembers exactly what it felt like to take Kate’s hand and tart running through the streets, the precise delicacy of Kate’s skull under her fingers as they kissed and the taste of Kate’s waxy lipstick in her own mouth, purple makeup smudged against the side of her face in the heat of a moment.

***

America’s still thinking about Kate as the train pulls into the dusty station eight hours later, about a conversation they’d had about three months into their relationship, once they’d visited maybe twenty, twenty-one different New Yorks, day trips and weekend holidays and once two weeks in the New York of a universe America can’t quite recall the details of now, only the inside of the shitty hotel room they’d rented. Mostly: the poor-quality print of an Edward Hopper painting on the wall opposite the window, how it felt to spend whole days in bed just because there was no place either of them could think of wanting to be more than right there, on the scratchy white bedsheets, staring at each other or up at the cracks in the ceiling.

They’d returned to Kate’s New York for the New Year’s celebrations and to catch up with friends, and had ended up watching the countdown in Times Square from the top of one of the surrounding buildings. Billy and Teddy had come with them, and Billy’s brother, and Cassie, Kate’s best friend from the first Young Avengers team.

That had been fun, friendly and no more awkward than it needed to be, but the conversation America is thinking of took place three days later, on the roof of another building, the other Hawkeye’s— someone had put an old sofa up there not too long ago, and they’d taken up a few beers from Clint’s fridge to drink under the almost-invisible stars. Kate had wanted to know which New York was America’s favourite; it hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time but, well. Hindsight, always 20/20, is that how the saying goes?

America never could pick a favourite version, but she told Kate it was Earth-408, one of the ones where the top of the Empire State Building had been made of copper, like the Statue of Liberty, standing tall and proud and distinctly blue rather than gold over the city. And even then, she’d picked the 408 only because the first favourite New York she decided on was technically a New-New-New York, the one on Mars in 1604, but Kate said that picking a New York that was actually a three-times-New York was cheating.

Kate’s favourite New York was, of course, her own, the city of her childhood and adolescence and young adulthood. It would have been hard for any other version to compete with the all the years and layers of experience that included, or at least that’s how Kate had explained it. America didn’t quite understand, really, thought it would be something akin to a nightmare to have so much of yourself all tied up in only one place.

(‘How do you deal with all the baggage?’ America had asked. ‘It’s not all terrible,’ Kate had replied, ‘and you have to take the good with the bad, don’t you? And all the stupid things that don’t really work, too. Like, in life, right? Then you know if you still like something after seeing it at its absolute best and its worst, well.’ She’d smiled at America then like she thought she knew what that might mean for them too, and America had kissed her full on the mouth.)

America is travelling on earth right now, going the long way for a change, thinking about the future and wondering when the fact she prefers to ignore her past completely is going to come right back round and bite her on the ass.

When she catches a glimpse of a woman with, of all things, the same shaped _shoulders_ as Kate, and spends half a second that feels a lot longer in the kind of electric, heart racing shock she thought she’d been glad to leave behind in the days of unrequited adolescent crushes— well, she thinks it might be a lot sooner than she’d been betting on.

Resisting the urge to ask the woman if she’s ever tried archery, America shoulders her pack more firmly and turns to face the other direction.

***

_We can't imagine getting old,_ America thinks one night in a rare moment of alcohol-induced clarity _, we can't imagine being anything other than too busy trying to keep it together for the whole universe to keep it together for ourselves_. But she and Kate are happy together, or free, at least, and maybe in the end it comes down to the same thing.

America’s always known she can burn brighter than a star in supernova and she knows Kate feels the same, so fragile and yet so much stronger than she can possibly know, a gaping ache in the pit of her stomach that will force her to throw herself against the boundaries of her world until they stretch and buckle around her, that will demand others take note until they have no choice but to listen.

They chase down honest-to-god mutant crocodiles in the sewers together, and dance silly-exuberant in the pools of light under street lamps, spinning, spinning, cars and bright lights and nothing so far out of their reach that they can't just open their hands and pluck it out of the air. They have sex in hotel rooms, kiss in the streets, write terrible half-earnest love poetry on bathroom walls. They are in love, and the whole multiverse is in love with them, and America can't imagine how anything could ever be better.

Kate says the first _I love you_ after the second month, and America follows four days later, standing side by side and panting in an alleyway somewhere in the backstreets of Brooklyn. 

And then, somehow, as the land falls into the sea and heavy stone crumbles to dust beneath the waves, as the last page of the book is turned and the adventure comes to its end, she and Kate are over, and America is lost, or as close to it as she’s come in a very long time.

***

Ten months later, somewhere in Nunavut, she wakes from a bad dream, adrenaline surging through her veins and the waxy taste of lipstick against her mouth. Breathing hard and thinking about Kate for the first time in weeks, she thinks maybe the dream wasn’t so bad, only wild enough in its intensity to create the illusion of terror. The devastation of its contents are, after all, solely emotional. 

Either way, she pulls together a bag of things and kicks a star-shaped hole in the fabric of the universe, steps through it and a moment later is in the midst of the bustle and noise of the busiest urbanised moon in the orbit of Jupiter, just barely past noon on local time and in the year 2256. She starts walking, the tumultuous surprise of life all around her still not quite enough to drown out her thoughts.

This is something America knows, logically, in every part of her that can string coherent thought together: there are some problems that there is no running from, even if you are capable of running further and faster and to stranger places than any other single person in the whole of the multiverse.

What she feels in her legs and fists and the strength of her arms is so very far removed from anything reason may be applied to that she doesn’t even consider _not_ to try and get away from herself until she’s kicked her way through three different worlds and half of the almost medieval-looking fortress where a bunch of assholes with big guns had tried to lock her in the dungeons.

After her escape, standing next to the pile of crumpled stone and metal sheeting that made up the fortress wall, looking out over the light of the moon on an ocean she’s never seen before, listening to the rumblings of the guards being sent out to recapture her— America thinks, for the first time in so long she can barely remember the last, _I think I want to go home_.

Then the sounds of the guards behind her are louder, shouting people running fast up the hill to where she’s standing on the cliff edge, and she shakes her head and kicks through her fourth portal of the day.

***

Eight months later it’s the middle of summer on Earth, the whole city of New York sharp with the smell of hot tar and exhaust fumes, and America stands on a street corner, thinking about crossing at the intersection in front of her or turning right to continue around the block. She’s also kind of casting about for anyone she thinks might wind up being deserving of a punching. It’s been at least seventy-two hours since her fists have done any justice in the world, and she’s feeling a bit antsy.

America always feels antsy in Kate’s New York. She tries not to think about why.

In any case, she’s eyeing up a particularly crude cat-caller about fifty feet away, judging exactly how much force to use when she’s threatening him, when she thinks she might see a flash of purple out of the corner of her eye, the heavy movement of straight black hair on a humid day. _Kate_ , she thinks, and whips her head around to get a closer look.

This used to happen more often, back when thinking of Kate felt more like the sting of a freshly grazed knee than the poking at half-bruised scabbing that it does now. She used to see dark black hair and the jut of a stubborn chin in the middle of every crowd, but she hasn't in months now, and here are round cheeks and the curve of a woman's muscled back too, purple sneakers and the memory of bullseyes and cheap beer. Every other time, the illusion has been dispelled in the space of a heartbeat, but this recognition is lingering and sure. So,  _so—_

“Hey, princess!” she yells, and thinks, _this time, maybe._


End file.
